AI Suffrage: A four-country survey on the acceptance of an automated voting system

Governments have begun to employ technological systems that use massive amounts of data and artificial intelligence (AI) in the domains of law enforcement, public health, or social welfare. In some areas, shifts in public opinion increasingly favor technology-aided public decision-making. This development presents an opportunity to explore novel approaches to how technology could be used to reinvigorate democratic governance and how the public perceives such changes. The study therefore posits a hypothetical AI voting system that mediates political decision-making between citizens and the state. We conducted a four-country online survey (N=6043) in Greece, Singapore, Switzerland, and the US to find out what factors affect the public’s acceptance of such a system. The data show that Singaporeans are most likely and Greeks least likely to accept the system. Considerations of the technology’s utility have a large effect on acceptance rates across cultures whereas attitudes towards political norms and political performance have partial effects

Estimating the Political Orientation of Twitter Users Using Network Embedding Algorithms

Estimating the political orientation of citizens has always been a crucial task in communication as well as political science studies. In this study, advanced network analysis tools are developed to tackle this task. Specifically, using network embedding algorithms, friendship networks are embedded into lower-dimensional Euclidean space while preserving specific topological features of social networks. The resulting embedded vectors are then used to estimate political orientation of Twitter users. It is also shown that these numerical representations can be used to estimate other user traits. The developed tools are applied to a benchmark dataset as well as a dataset developed by the authors. Our model decreased the mean absolute error of the state-of-the-art predictions on the benchmark income dataset by 15%. The developed tools have multiple use cases, for example, studying echo chambers and political communication on OSNs and in marketing campaigns to estimate user’s preferences

Social media and microtargeting: Political data processing and the consequences for Germany

Amongst other methods, political campaigns employ microtargeting, a specific technique used to address the individual voter. In the US, microtargeting relies on a broad set of collected data about the individual. However, due to the unavailability of comparable data in Germany, the practice of microtargeting is far more challenging. Citizens in Germany widely treat social media platforms as a means for political debate. The digital traces they leave through their interactions provide a rich information pool, which can create the necessary conditions for political microtargeting following appropriate algorithmic processing. More specifically, data mining techniques enable information gathering about a people's general opinion, party preferences and other non-political characteristics. Through the application of data-intensive algorithms, it is possible to cluster users in respect of common attributes, and through profiling identify whom and how to influence. Applying machine learning algorithms, this paper explores the possibility to identify micro groups of users, which can potentially be targeted with special campaign messages, and how this approach can be expanded to large parts of the electorate. Lastly, based on these technical capabilities, we discuss the ethical and political implications for the German political system

The Political Dashboard: A Tool for Online Political Transparency

Contemporary political communication is a multi- and cross-platform process. Because of its complexity, new tools are necessary to monitor and understand it. We present a system that ingests, stores, and processes political data from Twitter, Facebook, and online news articles. We visualize the data in the form of a freely accessible online dashboard. The political dashboard (https://political-dashboard.com/) aims to provide online political transparency and assist researchers, journalists, and the general public in understanding the German online political landscape